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COMMENTARY: A need for change in our national gun policy

Louis Cappelli
Published 12:47 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2017

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After the brutal attack that took place outside the Mandala Bay Resort and casino on October 1st, Jimmy Kimmel made it a point to employ his opening monologue as a way to voice his concerns over what had taken place.
USA TODAY

A sign and cowboy hat left at a makeshift memorial are seen outside the Route 91 music festival site beside the Mandalay Hotel Oct. 4, 2017 on the Las Vegas Strip, after a gunman killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 others when he opened fire from the Mandalay Hotel on a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nev.(Photo: Mark Ralston, AFP/Getty Images)

On Oct. 1, another day that will live in infamy for breaking records for carnage, we watched in horror the sights and sounds of the theater of war. We find ourselves taking stock of another horrific tragedy that does not have clear-cut answers. Nevertheless, one fact remains: The stockpile of weapons used in this incident draws a clear red line for the destruction it caused. The actions point to one man and a stockpile of firearms transforming into a weapon of mass destruction, killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500 before police could eliminate the threat.

Congress’ inaction should not be shocking on this public health crisis – remember, this is the same branch of government, along with the executive, that is in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. That said, how, in this time, in this place, can we allow these senseless tragedies to continue at a more than daily basis?

This is the same Congress that voted down an assault weapons ban, voted down a law for national background checks, nixed a law that prevented people with known mental health conditions from buying a gun and continues to allow people on the no-flight list to buy firearms. Now, to my astonishment, the Congress is moving legislation, just one week after one of their members, shooting victim, Rep. Steve Scalise returned to the Capital, to make it easier to buy a silencer, reclassify armored piercing bullets to make them easier to purchase and pass the conceal-carry reciprocity legislation. And believe it or not, this will be done on the Hearing Protection Act, sounds harmless, right? Who wouldn’t want to protect someone’s hearing by allowing them to transport their firearms to other states undermining state’s rights and stricter gun laws, buy armor piercing bullets and a silencer to boot. Has this Republican Congress lost its mind?

We need change on this important public health issue, the carnage must stop and we have to stop asking each other how we explain these tragedies to our children. This is not the landscape we want them to grow up in, this cannot be a nation where we must fear someone with untreated mental illness can get an arsenal and kill as many people as possible. Furthermore, as a society, we cannot afford to have individuals who have no right to own a weapon of mass destruction use it against our community.

Even former Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led the war in Afghanistan, believes military-grade weapons – which were used in Las Vegas, Orlando, San Bernardino, Aurora and Newtown, and the list goes on – do not belong in the hands of civilians. This is a man who intimately knows the hell of war and has carried assault weapons with him throughout his entire military career. There is a simple premise here: We need legislation to serve the many and not the few. We need legislation that will protect our children, law enforcement and community, not just the NRA and its members. We cannot continue to be the only westernized nation where our citizens are victimized at this rate by gun violence.

This is not a time to sit down, but one to stand up and demand change from the members of Congress who continue to sit idly by while taking money from the NRA for their re-election campaign. This is a time to support members of Congress like Rep. Donald Norcross, who represents Camden County and is standing up to the gun lobby and committed to making our streets, public spaces, law enforcement and community safer.

We won’t let this issue turn into an Onion headline; the Camden County freeholder board will not accept a macabre comedy to come from these continued incidents of gun violence. As a society, it is imperative that these tragedies do not settle into the background as a normal occurrence, and that together we work to change them.